


Drowning in the Dark

by reminiscence



Category: Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon Frontier
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, Depression, Gen, Psychosis, apparent character death, disbelief, ffn challenge: ficletchap endurance challenge, ffn challenge: mega prompts challenge, ffn challenge: the tale in fragments challenge, ficletchap, graphic descriptions of bodies, metaphorical descriptions of death and loneliness, really doesn't work, trying to keep a fractured family together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-02 10:51:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 11,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10216385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reminiscence/pseuds/reminiscence
Summary: Kouji only learnt about the lives of his mother and brother when they were dead, when buried things couldn't pass through the earth to the grave and had to come back up again. But just as neglecting the living leads to a death beyond sight, delving too deep into the lives of the dead can cause the soul to flake away inside.





	1. Bleach

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not too sure about the rating for this one, so I'm following the "if in doubt, keep it M" rule. Some of the chapters might be a big graphic for some of you. I can't say all the warnings now either, since that also involves spoilers, but I'll try to give them chapter by chapter without spoiling too much (ouch, tall order).
> 
> For this chapter, warning for a somewhat graphic description of a drowned body. Which naturally involves a dead body.
> 
> And now that that's out of the way, some less pressing matters. :D First, this is written for two challenges at the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link's in my profile) – The Tale in Fragments Challenge (with 100 prompts, easy list 4), and the Mega Prompts Challenge, writing prompts 85 – write a multichip over 100 chapters. These are very short chapters (maximum of 800 words because of the first challenge), but they're chapters regardless. They'll tell a whole story when they're done, and taking a 100 prompts list was the easiest way to guarantee this story will reach 100 chapters. :D And that I won't run out of stuff for it too. This also frames the…more gory details very nicely (if you consider this gore; I don't but I was outvoted by some old school friends on the matter).
> 
> The other thing before I throw you guys into the fic is the unspecified characters in this first chapter. If you couldn't guess from the summary or the characters listed, it'll be obvious by the last line – and if it's not, think back to Frontier canon. Which one of the twins fits closer into that last line?
> 
> And that's all from me. Future authors notes will hopefully not be as long. Enjoy. :D

He'd always thought of drowning as some foolish sweet death: an escape from the monotone they claimed bled them dry, where the dark water could bury it all. He always thought of it as painless, like fog stifling one's senses and lulling them into eternal sleep. He always thought of it as poetic, beautiful in that the empty shell left behind was white and perfectly plastic like a doll.

That was before he saw what it really was, what sort of corpse it really left behind. Eyes not closed in acceptance, willingness and peace, but rather open, glassy and empty and yet somehow full of fear and desperation before they froze. No-one had been kind enough to close them. Not then. His own hand had come shaking forward, but it had fallen; he'd backed away and crashed into the cart before someone noticed and took away that sight.

They covered the body too, but not before the image had been burnt into his mind. Not pale and perfect skin but eyes and nose and mouth were tinged with blue – a dark blue he didn't thing was natural on a human body. But apparently it was, when that body was so desperately starved for its oxygen. And it wasn't so smooth and perfect like a marker someone had used to paint, but something horrible and indistinguishable and unarguably real.

And that blue blotched the skin as well: specks that had no sense, no pattern, stitched in white red – and the bleached pallor he'd imagined would be there was only in those eyes, and even that was lined with streaks of dilute red. _That_ looked fake, like someone had used a red pen with fading ink, the sort that went almost pink and skipped a few strokes without fail.

No, that wasn't true. There was more white: a thin line of foam between lax lips, mixed with water trickling torturously slow. Or maybe that was just the water that clung to the body still, the water of Tokyo Bay that had taken more than its fair share of romantic suicides and had now been exposed as the monster it really was. All of that was gone now; he was alone, in the dark, but that image was still there: a face, blue and red and dead with an expression of desperation and fear fixed upon it. Immortalised. He shivered as it stole his sight again. In the darkness, there wasn't even anything else to distract him. At least the clinging salt and algae dragged into the hospital's inherent antiseptic smell had blocked his nose. The image alone had been so brutal he didn't know what he would have done if smell – or, God forbid, _touch_ – had accompanied it.

And that was just the face; the rest of the body had been covered with a white sheet, slowly soaked.

It was a thief, that body. It had stolen all the anger he'd meant to unleash, the hatred he'd meant to cling to stubbornly until his resolve failed, the questions he'd meant to ask, the shock he'd meant to struggle against until it crumbled by his hands. It had stolen his disillusion, his ignorance – and to think, his first meeting with his brother was with a dead body keeping his name.


	2. Absorbed

There were two separate incidences, two separate deaths. He'd forgotten about his mother's. Maybe it was because he'd reconciled himself to her apparent death already – a death which had been, then, a lie. It was so easy to forget those few words when he had a strong memory that opposed it.

But no-one had ever said anything about a brother, so that had stuck out like a sore thumb in his mind. That was what he remembered when he woke up at home, sticky and uncomfortable under a too warm blanket and a dried out cloth over his eyes and something scratching stubbornly in his throat. He remembered that body that resembled a badly painted plastic sculpture: not that perfect wax doll he'd always imagined but something…ugly, wrong – intolerable, and yet still a picture in his mind. A deformed picture yes: fuzzy and inexact and too bright to see in far too many places – but a picture nonetheless.

Maybe it was because he never did see his mother's body in the end, but he only saw her portrait: a little faded with age but smiling, softly smiling, behind his eyes when she was mentioned. And he felt all the usual things because he'd believed her to be dead before anyway: sadness, some desire, a bit of anger… But when they mentioned his brother it was that image that had burned itself, incomplete, into his mind, and it was crushing him.

Sometimes it was enough to compress the contents into a tiny fluid ball he could choke on until it spewed out of his mouth along with the bile accompanying it. Sometimes it took the rest of the world out of focus, like looking under a microscope at a poorly made slide: the sort that seemed to have two layers and focusing on one always made the other one indistinct. And then he'd find he'd stumbled into something when a stinging shoulder or palm dragged him back, or he'd fallen against someone when their too hot bodies scorched him through his shirt. But other times it was out of context, without a mention of anything that should remind him, and he would just look at the picture and think about just how _wrong_ it looked.

But he didn't know what the brother – not _his_ brother yet because that part still floated about like a rock in a small cup, banging on the glass but never ever turning into the water itself – _should_ look like, so he really couldn't say what "right" was.


	3. Wipe

His picture of his mother's gotten a little dusty he thought, and he grabbed a cloth and started rubbing at the picture-frame glass. It's a mindless task, but right now those sorts of tasks seem like the only ones he can occupy himself with, because otherwise other _things_ creep in and he loses a little more of his life trying to climb away from those slippery sloping walls.

And that picture was something old and familiar to him. It didn't go out of focus or change because he'd learnt something new about her, because he'd been told almost ten years ago she'd died of some chronic illness and he was told just days ago the same thing. The only thing that changed was the time: wasted time because he'd never met her, never seen her, never talked to her…

He just had that photo, that picture of his mum that was already looking a little peaky under the sad quality of the photograph. He'd kept it in that frame for the nine years he'd had it, but that didn't stop the ageing process. That didn't stop it becoming a little more washed out by the day, even if he didn't touch the picture itself, just the glass that protected it and the frame that held it all together.

That didn't stop his mother from having wasted away like that, regardless of _when_ it had happened because he could muster up as much of that anger that had leaked away from him as he wanted but it wouldn't change a thing. His mother having been alive all those years didn't change a thing – except he now had a grave to go to.

A grave he didn't think he _could_ go to, because that wasted photograph was about all he could tolerate right now. Because the image of his mother slowly becoming whiter and pinker instead of all those darker colours like deep red and navy blue. And he was sure he'd hate that later, but at that point he was still unsteady on his feet and in his dreams and ordered to stay at home – and he didn't really care about that order because there wasn't anywhere else he _wanted_ to be anyway.

And he could stare at that photo of his mother all he wanted, stare at it and forget that other death, that other face he couldn't stare at properly because he didn't know how it should look. Not like him: he wouldn't accept that answer whether someone said it to him or not. Not like him, otherwise his own face would become an unbearable thing: bloated and blue and foaming in the mirror's depths.

But it was impossible to lie so easily, and he'd always been a bad liar. That's why he'd hid behind anger. That's why he was a badly sown patchwork quilt without the pins, since the pins were gone.


	4. Wosh

A few days after his nice perfect world is shredded to pieces – and never mind it was only that after he'd padded it thickly with anger-filled fat – his father comes back from somewhere and hands him a box.

'They're…' The man gives a heavy sigh, before removing the lid and showing face down photos, a few video cassettes and some other stuff. 'Mementos,' he finishes. 'From your mother's apartment.'

Kouji did not look at the box. If there was a face-up photo he didn't want to see it, or the expression on his father's face.

'Are you..?' He could hear his father shuffling his feet on the carpet like an awkward child. 'Are you feeling better?'

Kouji shrugged. The glass that encased his mother's picture was shining in the morning sun, showing even more crudely where the print had faded away from age. But his memory could fill in the gaps. He'd had that photo since he'd been five or six; now he was fourteen and, if he had any talent at drawing or painting, could replicate that entire image from memory alone: better than the original that had wilted away with time.

But he didn't have that talent to make such memories everlasting. He couldn't even keep his perfect pictures in his mind.

He hadn't even had a perfect picture of his mother. That once upon a time image had already captured the flaws of her body and her soul, the sickness that slowly ate her from the inside out.

His eyes drifted back to the box. Maybe there was something better in there, something that showed her true face – and the true face of that brother so he could rewrite that one still in his mind. There, like a bad itch that always came back when remembered, worse than before, except not worse because experience too had grown, and he shut his eyes tight and tried to overwrite it with how it _should_ have looked…but all he had to replace it with was a badly focused image of his own face.


	5. Welcome

When he woke up again it was mid-afternoon and his father was nowhere to be seen. The box was still there though, sitting innocently on his desk in the soft glow that forced its way past the now drawn curtains. The lid was off and he could see the face down photos there. Other stuff too. Video cassettes he would need to go downstairs to watch. A folder he'd need to open before he could see its contents. A few envelopes, sealed, he'd have to tear apart to see what it contained. Some CDs he'd need to put into a computer to read.

He turned his head away, but there was nothing that could steal his mind on the wall. That was just a blank slate, not quite white because the last time it had been painted was two years back and age had made it that way. It was still easy though, easy to draw upon like a canvas that had been worn away under the sun so that the paint brush slid across its smooth surface instead of caught on the rough bumps from the new. He turned quickly away, and it was back into the view of that box again.

He slowly sat up, reached for it before letting his hands fall, then reached for it again. He didn't want to see those photos, he didn't, but at the same time he wanted to rewrite those images in his mind and he needed those photos to do it. Ghosts were supposed to be a little transparent yes, but unchanging through time but his had faded, gotten further away, with age. And dolls, empty caskets that no longer clung to their soul, were supposed to be pretty, plastic things that were without their life but otherwise unharmed, untouched. They shouldn't spoil like too-ripe apples or over-fried sweet potatoes or bread that soaked up far too much water and mould.

He grabbed at the box before he could change his mind again, like a dying man whose only source of nourishment was his own flesh and blood. A state where even the most abhorrent act was perfectly reasonable, and yet there was still that reluctance that held him back from trying to save his life.

But with the first photo in his hands that restraint was gone, and with a fever he'd long since not possessed he flipped it over and stared hard – then gave a cry of disappointment and tossed it on the floor.

He didn't know _who_ that old woman was, but it couldn't possibly be his mother.


	6. Unpack

The picture frame clattered loudly, and it was only because he'd dropped it himself that he didn't jump out of his skin. Still, his hair stood on end and his muscles tensed and locked. The sound was eerily loud in his otherwise silent room.

He stared at the back of the portrait: that corkboard like backing with two staples and a piece of string that suggested it was meant to be hung on a nail somewhere. Maybe it had been hung at one point. The string looked somewhat frail.

He was on his knees beside the frame and fingering that string lightly before he realised he had moved. And he wondered why. He wondered why he was still looking at a photo that meant absolutely nothing to him.

But the only other thing there was was the box with all those other things he'd probably get through one day, when he stopped finding every opportunity in his room to pull away. And the frame had pulled him away so easily. Like a choice between the huge pile of work he would eventually have to do and that day's newspaper he hadn't read yet. He wasn't a newspaper reader unless there was something he was trying to avoid. He didn't stare at strange old women's photos unless he was still reluctant too.

He picked the portrait up carefully, relieved to see the frame and glass within were undamaged, then wondered why he cared. But she was probably important to someone else. He shouldn't have flung it away like that.

But the bitterness had been so sour on his tongue in those seconds, he hadn't been able to help it. Strangers…he kept his distance from them, left them like that. The less people he knew the less he would lose. The philosophy of his life: it was what ruled the bare décor of his room, the unsociableness in school, the refusal to call Satomi anything close to his family… He couldn't lose them if he didn't have them after all.

But when he did have them, even a little inch of them, he couldn't let them go. Not even by replacing them with the faces of thousands of strangers.

There were some people he couldn't _not_ let come a little closer. Even if he tried to chase their faces away by staring hard at the portrait in his hands. That old wrinkled skin that seemed to sag everywhere, ill-fitting. Those black sunspots all over her face and shoulders, eating the light away. That grey hair stripped bare of whatever colour had once been in it. Those hands with lumps and fingers bent in odd ways, like a metal spoon bent and straightened too many times, unable to ever return to its true, perfect, form.

Who was she, he wondered briefly, who had clung to life while her body was so obviously abandoning her?


	7. Educated

Who was that woman in the photo? Kousei had wondered the same thing when he saw that photo afterwards, face down on the desk but with the wooden frame slightly chipped: an obvious mark of its fall.

But since he'd asked for the box quite urgently, he couldn't expect its contents to be only what he expected. Still, he found himself staring hard at the woman. He should know her. He did, probably. She looked vaguely familiar…and the longer he looked, the more similarities he saw between her and his ex-wife.

But the woman in the photo was far too old. It must be her mother then. His children's grandmother. But Kouji had never known her, or about her. Never even asked what happened to his grandparents on his mother's side. Perhaps he'd just never wanted to know.

Kousei thought a moment, then picked up the phone and a scrap of paper tucked safely out of sight. The number was almost unfamiliar; he'd barely dialled it, but he had once recently, so it wasn't a complete stranger to him. Still, the sounds of the phone reaching through space to connect to some remote location were far more familiar.

Still, he was a little nervous when someone picked up on the other end. Even if he knew exactly who it was, whose voice to expect…because there was nobody else living in that lonely little apartment now.

'The photo of your grandmother…' Kousei began, after the pleasantries that seemed so cold and sad and distant were out of the way. Then he stopped; he really didn't know what to say after that.

'I have another copy,' the other replied, his voice holding none of the uncertainty Kousei's did.

Kousei supposed it meant that photo _was_ of Tomoko's mother. 'Well…' he said, before changing tracks. 'How are you holding up?'

'Okay,' was the short reply.

Kousei had, in some passing thought years ago when it had seemed impossible for him to talk to his other son like this again, wondered if he'd be more talkative than Kouji. Now he knew that was not the case. 'I collected some old photos of us,' he tried. 'When can I bring them over?'

There was silence on the other end. The last time Kousei had gone there was to pick up the box of photos, and that had been less by approval and more by spontaneity.

'After 2pm on Saturday?' the other suggested finally.

Kousei agreed. It wouldn't be unusual for him to disappear for a few hours on a Saturday – but he would have much preferred _not_ having to tiptoe around like this.

But maybe that was just the price to pay for separating two children who'd been born together.


	8. Needless

Kouji's parents had kept him home for school for about a week, and he hadn't had much to do in that time beyond that spiral of painting and glossing over and painting – and all of that without leaving a mark.

Though he supposed that wasn't quite true. He remembered dropping a picture frame a few days ago, and it now had a chip that would need to be sandered to become smooth again. He'd asked his father if he had any sandpaper. His father had looked surprised, but replied in the negative.

And then there was the box of things. It had moved all over the place: from his deck to his desk chair to under the bed to the bookshelf and back to the desk again. But eventually he'd searched through it: looked for what he really wanted, what he'd been denying.

And there were photos of his mother: older photos that showed her aging, growing even more frail. Photos that showed the process of body and soul being slowly eaten away.

When he closed his eyes after that, he imagined a once white and whole body being devoured by wriggly little worms, and it was enough to bring yellow dots into his vision and that bitter-tasting bile to his throat, but not enough to drag him out of his slumber.

And when he did awaken, it was to the residue of that burning bitterness in his throat and the light scratching at the back of his mind of trying to peel off freshly dried paint so that the image could be replaced. He stared hard at the blank wall: shadows crept up as he watched, and he yanked his head away, towards anything, _anything_ , that would let him rewrite those images.

And he found himself on his bed again, with that box. A Pandora's box he kept on getting dragged to. But this time he ignored the photos: ignored those small rectangular pieces of smooth and glossy paper that could pretend to be oh so perfect but painted such flawed pictures inside.

There were other things in the box. Papers folded many times that he brushed aside, in case they were photos printed from a computer. He dug around blindly, feeling blank pieces instead of looking at the detail that lived within them – and then his hand enclosed around something more three-dimensional – part round, part flat, like half a sphere – and he pulled it out.

It was a little glass orb filled with dark water and rattly things inside he couldn't quite make out. _Broken_ , he thought automatically. Water globes like that shouldn't have rattly things inside of them. They only had some set stage and something like glitter or fluff that spread about the scene when the water inside was shaken about.

He stared hard at it. He didn't see any glitter or white fluffy stuff. He shook it anyway, then gritted his teeth at the annoying rattling sound: something hard striking the plastic again and again. He felt around the bottom instead, looking for how to open it, how to fix that broken scene inside, whatever it was – and maybe replace the dark water with something clearer, more appropriate.

It was a stupid thing to do. It didn't even belong to him – or maybe it did, now. It had been in that box after all, that box his father had given him. Who's was it originally, though? Did he really want to know? It was a little dark, but he'd need his desk light on to work on that little glass orb – as well as some dish to put the pieces in, so the water didn't stain anything.

Though it took him almost all day to open. Still, his parents seemed to think it was a good day, because they decided he could go back to school once the new week started if he thought he was ready.

It occurred to him he might have been better off there than at home in the week that had passed.


	9. Plausible

There wasn't much detail in the scene, at the end. Most of it was black paint on the inner plastic, with soft, almost invisible, streaks of blue and green. The rattly things had been small rocks, and there'd been some dirt in there as well. Probably what had made the water so dark; the water looked like plain old water to him.

He washed the dirt out, and the smudges it left on the almost black paint. He glued the rocks down, and added a little bit of yellow powder he mixed in with clear glue to hold it down. That way it looked like the sandy rocks on a beach – and he left a little bit of that yellow powder loose to mix in to the water as well.

But the background was too dark, too macabre, to be a happy beach scene. He knew he had paint somewhere, and he dug about his shelves.

They were mostly books, but there were a few other odds and ends there as well: strings for his guitar, some music sheets, some half-baked attempts at drawing and painting, and, finally, a few half-used tubes of paints. Black, white, blue…

He didn't need the black. He took the white and blue though, and painted over the original background so it could be a clear blue sky instead, marred only by the soft wisps of cloud promising a bright and sunny day.

But the black was still underneath, and he couldn't think of why it made him so uncomfortable until he fell asleep that night, and saw himself drowning in a deep black ocean without a light.

_The sun!_ he cried to himself, trying to override the image with the one he'd painted, painted over that black. But he couldn't, because he hadn't had yellow paint, just food colouring. He hadn't made a sun in that little world, for that little beach, that suddenly wasn't a beach again but an endless depth of water.

But he had made a shallow base, with yellow sand that was flooded in the high tides but left to the cool freeing wind in the low. Though even that was gone. His feet were searching through the darkness, and finding nothing to stand upon at all.


	10. Brake

Kousei wondered if his current actions counted as sneaking around. He hadn't told Satomi his plans, and, at this stage, there was no way he could tell Kouji. Keeping Satomi in the dark though…maybe that was a bit of insecurity on his part. There was no reason she shouldn't know, especially now that other secrets were unavoidably out.

And yet he was in his car, on a late lunch break, without a word to anyone else where he'd planned to go. Not even the person he was going to meet – which he realised, once he pulled up at the apartment in question and knocked on the door without answer, was a mistake on his part.

Luckily, a neighbour saw him knocking and suggested a place to look. Which brought Kousei to a creek down a road he couldn't reach by car, so he parked it to the side. And if he'd known the road was like that, it would have been easier to just leave it in the apartment's parking –

But the truth was, he didn't know that area at all, aside from the apartment his ex-wife had once resided in with his other son. He hadn't known there would be such a wild place in an urban landscape, but here he was, scratching the soft skin at the back of his hands and on his face and digging into the fragile soles of his shoes.

He hadn't done that since he was young and newly married, chasing a pair of twins with a knack of adventure and trouble. And now, ironically, he was chasing one of them again. Ironic – and how cruel that he even had to, in a situation where he should have been able to take both his children under wing again.

He knew he was favouriting Kouji with his solution – or not solution, because it wasn't one of those at all. But it was a smaller loss than the alternative – or, rather, no loss at all. Because one couldn't lose a closeness with something that was far away to begin with. The sort of defence mechanism that adults practised more than children, simply because it was an idea that escaped them. Children were the sorts that had a ring of stuffed animals on their bed and refused to share even one of them. And if they found a toy they lost in the bushes, they'd snatch it back, not realising they might have to surrender it soon again, or pay an even greater cost.

And this wasn't even a situation that included lies and deceits. It was just a warping of the truth. Because even twins could see the same thing in two different ways. That was obvious just by looking at the glass orb. Kouji had covered all the black paint up.


	11. Abusive

'There's a nicer stream near your school,' Kousei commented. His cheeks and hands were stinging, but aside from that he'd made it to the other in one piece. 'Why choose a place like this?'

'Nobody comes here,' the other replied, turning around…though he didn't show surprise in his facial expression or form. And he should have been, because Kousei had not said anything about coming. Though he'd made so much noise on the way, the presence itself probably hadn't counted as much of a surprise.

_Nobody comes here…_ That explained why the trees and shrubs were overgrown. But the very presence of the two of them contradicted that statement.

'You came here.'

'Mmm…' was the only reply he received.

'Was it…because you wanted to be alone?' He found that hard to believe; that was something that could have easily been achieved at the apartment.

'Nothing like that.' The boy, still seated, turned so the pair of them could see each other on the backdrop of the wild creek. 'I just like this place.'

'I…see.' In all honesty, Kousei didn't see at all. 'That box I picked up earlier…I brought a few things back from it.' He pulled them out of his pockets: the picture-frame with the old woman, and the refurnished glass orb.

There was a small sound of surprise as Kousei passed the two. The hand that accepted the orb shook a little more, but there was nothing on his facial expression that gave him away.

_A totally different sort of poker face than Kouji…_ Kousei thought. But that brief image was soon swept away by a curtain of hair as the other examined the two things. Scratched fingers ran along the splits in the glass and frame after it had fallen – or been thrown. Neither of them had any way of knowing which it was after all.

The glass orb was a different matter. It told a long and detailed story in its transformation: in the way it had been remade and sealed so only by breaking the current image could it be replaced by another one…or the old.

Was that how every situation was, Kousei wondered? He'd given up rights of being that boy's father and now he couldn't be until the barrier actually _broke_? And how was it supposed to break? He couldn't throw it on the ground like the glass orb and watch its glass shatter or the things inside to become unstuck and chaos.

Or maybe it was that that sort of chaos couldn't be fixed with simple glue.

But relationships weren't all or nothing, and that was the real reason he had come, and come without a word to anyone else.

'Let's go for some lunch.'

The boy turned to him, blinked, then set the two things in his hands down and stood up.

'Don't…you want to bring those along?' Kousei asked.

'Nobody comes here,' the other replied. 'They'll be fine.'


	12. Army

The setting was an ironic one, but it didn't seem as though his father – that man – had realised it. That orb seemed to speak of even greater ironies. He remembered how he'd made it before. How the interior had become detached in the heavy currents – but that was when the creek had been newly found and still an unknown, a danger.

Now he knew when to expect those harsher currents that were more like rivers than creeks – but they called it a creek still. A creek that had been overrun by the twisting branches that nobody had bothered to clear. Maybe, in a few years, it wouldn't be reachable at all. Most people had stopped coming to it long ago. Before the plants had started to grow wild, when someone would come every once in a while and clip them down and under control… But even then, it was a place that few people came to. There was a much brighter creek near the local junior high school, where the students planted flowers every year and some old lady that lived nearby tended to them.

Most seemed to equate brighter with nicer. Kouichi didn't agree with that, because it also equated to people crowding it, forcing it into submission. Not like this one, where things grew wild except what he broke walking through and sitting down – but it seemed all the more comfortable that way. More real.

And maybe more cruel that way, because those who sat by or walked along the other creek could be abdicated from responsibility. The one who cleared the path for them was someone else after all. And they never had to worry about the water suddenly overflowing and being wild. They never had to worry about it being a mix of brown and green and dry in the hottest summer days. It was practically an artificial creek, too perfect to be alive.

He looked into the glass orb in his hands. That's what it reminded him of. That naïve idea that control coincided with life.

He supposed that was a reason why there wasn't some God who'd created the world a part of the living.


	13. Profuse

Kouichi didn't refuse, which, for Kousei, had been a distinct possibility. But he didn't seem terribly keen either. Kousei decided he couldn't really fault that. School had let out by the time he'd come, so most likely Kouichi had already eaten during his own lunch break. Kousei hadn't, but he could eat at his desk if he wanted to. It was just an excuse to talk about other things.

Or it was supposed to be anyhow. Once Kousei had found a random place he didn't look out of place in – since he was still in a suit – but didn't look so terribly fancy that a fourteen year old would be uncomfortable in (or more uncomfortable in) – and they'd sat down opposing each other at a table for four, Kousei found himself fishing for conversation again.

'So…how's school treating you?'

He winced as soon as the words were out of his mouth. They sound pathetic, even to him, and apparently Kouichi thought so too because a simple "okay" was the only answer he graced it with.

Or perhaps he had his own reasons for keeping his answers polite but short.

And, unlike with Kouji, Kousei didn't have the help of report cards, certain giveaways lying about and discussions with teachers to help him out. Though that would have to change, now that Tomoko was…

But a lunch table wasn't really the place to discuss those sorts of things.

And thinking of nothing else to say that wouldn't similarly fall flat, he took a good look at his son. The similarities were obvious, but he'd spent enough time around Kouji to be able to see the differences as well. The different hairstyle – well, someone would have to be blind to miss _that_ – and the different shade of blue that framed his pupils. The paler skin – which Kousei assumed was because he tended to stay in dense areas like under a tree by the creek instead of out in the sun. The slightly different built…

'Do you play sports?'

'Uhh…not really.' Apparently, he'd caught Kouichi a tad off guard by that question. Or the suddenness of it. Kousei had caught himself off guard…but there was no time like the present to get to know a little more about his son. He'd done his grovelling already, before Kouichi had cut them off. And it wouldn't help to push the issue. Not yet anyway.

It didn't matter that he wasn't necessarily in the wrong and neither was Kouichi or Tomoko or Kouji or _anyone_ and it was just how the law, and the world, worked. They'd just hoped to make things easier. Instead of children who would forever pine for the other's company. Or get to know each other from a distance to the point where they could come to hate each other. And neither of them had expected to die. Neither of them had expected to come upon this situation. And least of all have a problem with what should have been a simple matter for the other parent taking custody.

Or maybe they'd suspected that Tomoko, as a single mother with not a particularly well-paying job, may have had trouble getting permission from the court to raise two children. But not Kousei. Never Kousei. He was a man with a degree and qualifications and there weren't as many prejudices against single fathers as there were for single mothers. And especially not once he'd been promoted in to his own office and had remarried. No problem at all.

And he couldn't rub off the feeling that whatever was going through Kouji's head was because of the separation back then: the decisions they'd thought they'd made in the best interests of their kids.

'Do you think it would have been better if we hadn't split you two up?'

Maybe he wasn't even talking to Kouichi when he asked the question, but still, it was Kouichi sitting opposite him, and Kouichi who replied.

'I'd rather we didn't talk about this.'

Kousei was quick to agree, but the question had already been asked and it only seemed to make the uncomfortable silence between them heavier.


	14. Apathetic

He couldn't find the orb.

He'd worked so hard to change it, and it was gone.

And it seemed like such a silly thing to be hung up on as well, now that he'd gone back to school for the first time in a week and had a pile of assignments to keep him company.

He still had black paint, didn't he? If he painted over them all, he wouldn't have to do them all.

Takuya probably stood a better chance of getting away with it, and his go-to excuse was "my little brother ate it."

He didn't want to hear it now. He had a brother. A brother who ate too much water and died, if that was the way one wanted to put it.

Black water where he couldn't find the light of the sun above.

Was that his way of showing his brother the light? He didn't think he was so… sentimental.

A brother he didn't know, at that.

A brother who'd needed someone to grab his hand at that moment, or shine the torch, but there'd been no-one to do that at all.

_That's not my fault. I didn't know._

He searched frantically for the globe. It wasn't on his shelf where he could swear he left it.

_It's not here! It's not here!_

Why was it so important?

_I'm not the one who should have had to save you._

His books fell. His paint rolled. The black one spilt into the carpet and good riddance for that. He didn't need black. Why would anyone need black?

That orb had been painted black before he'd covered it.

He should have scraped it all.

_See, there's no darkness there at all._

Dark waters. Dark shores. No light to guide him anywhere.

He flicked on his lights, even if it was still afternoon. The light banished the shadows from the corners but nothing would get rid of the ones under things: under the bed, under the desk, under the shelf…

And the orb was nowhere.

But he needed to scrape that darkness off. It itched at him now and he'd been so calm before, so tired – and now it itched and itched and itched and his room was a mess and he'd have to clean that up as well and some of his books were stained in black…

And his hands. His hands were stained with black as well. Black paint. That smell burning his nose and made it leak in turn and did his body really think tears and snot was going to wash it all away? He was more practical than that.

But it did look nice and blurry and maybe he couldn't see the black spots on his books after he scrubbed them dry but the paint on the carpet needed to be properly washed out.

And the black in the orb needed to be scrubbed as well and where had his little ball of sadness turned happiness gone off to?

See, the sadness was making a mess of his carpet now.

_I gave you light. Didn't you want it?_

He should have just scraped it out, instead of covering it.


	15. Trick

In the end, he had to buy supplies. Which was an interesting challenge because he wasn’t usually the artistic type and therefore had no idea how to go about making a globe like that.

But he was going to do it, because he’d turned his room upside down looking and still couldn’t find the damn thing, and that meant it wasn’t there anymore.

And the only way to fill the empty space was to create it anew.

It was a shame he couldn’t create people the same way. Only material memories like this.

Because if he could have created the mother and brother he didn’t even know, he would have. In a heartbeat.

Or so he told himself… because the truth was he only really knew them from stories and memories and mementos.

Like that orb.

And he was transforming them. He could see that himself. The way he’d coloured the orb so dark grains turned into sand on a beach. Those gloomy waters that had risen out of his mind – or was it the other way around? The waters that took them both had gotten in, and now he was blotting them out of existence?

He’d slept more easily last night, anyway. And fitfully this time. So after school here was here, at the art shop wandering how to go about it all.

They sold sand. And glitter. And maybe a little glitter would brighten up the water so he would up getting both but he still didn’t understand how to create the globe for it.

                ‘What are you making?’ the store girl asked.

He didn’t jump. He was too wary of shadows lately for them to sneak up on him. ‘A globe,’ was all he replied. And he still needed the glass and the water… Well, water he could get from anywhere. Maybe he should add a shell though. They looked rather pretty, sitting there on the shelf.

                ‘A globe,’ the girl repeated. ‘You could just use a jam jar, you know? Not quite as round but far more space and cheap too –‘             

                ‘No.’ He gave no explanation as to why.

                ‘Well then…’ She hummed to herself as she moved a few aisles back. He followed her, and there were a row of empty display bottles there, small and different shapes and sizes. She picked one up and handed it to him, and it was light and round… Exactly what he needed.

As he examined it, she examined his purchases. ‘You’re missing things, you know.’ She led him to another aisle. ‘You don’t just put water in globes. You need glycerine too.’

                ‘Glycerin?’ Kouji repeated blankly.

                ‘You want the glitter and sand to fall _slowly_.’ She emphasised the “slowly”. ‘Water’s not going to do that, you know. Don’t use too much though otherwise it’ll never settle. Just a single blop – kind of like sauce. And you’ll want oil based paint, otherwise the water will wash it off.’

He had acrylic paint at home.

                ‘And superglue to seal the lid on after you’re all done. Tape or normal glue would just dissolve. And also to stick down whatever you want stuck down. You should have something… Oh, you picked a shell. That works, I guess.’

So his editing the original globe wouldn’t have lasted long as it was. He’d used the wrong sort of paint, and the wrong sort of glue. A quick fix – but in a few days, it would have been gone like a mirage: like a trick in the light.

But now he could recreate it from scratch – and change it permanently.

And change that nightmare too.


	16. Disastrous

It turned out that he _really_ wasn’t the artistic type. His first few attempts were disasters.

That was okay. He had the internet and he could follow instructions, provided they were thorough enough.

The problem was, artistic things like this weren’t detailed quite so thoroughly and so there were a lot of false starts and a lot of messes, before he got something looking reasonably like the original. And that was a few days and quite a bit of pocket money’s worth – and it was quite lucky he hoarded his pocket money when he didn’t want anything in particular because otherwise he’d have wound up even more frustrated and impatient by the end of it all.

And never mind his room looked like a warzone after the first few attempts. He kept on trying.

And eventually he got something reasonable, and fixing that into perfection was a far more meticulous job.

That turned out to be less frustrating, surprisingly. Maybe it was simply because it was less messy, and he therefore had less distractions. Or maybe because he was so close now, that he could afford to be pedantic as he worked out what he needed to change and how he could do that without destroying the entire architecture and having to start from scratch _again_.

And his father and stepmother just wondered why he had to get it perfect. Neither of them mentioned where the original orb had gotten to.

Probably thrown out accidentally or something. He took a good deal more care to tuck this one away in his top drawer when he wasn’t working on it. His top _locked_ drawer.

And he was working on it as much as he could manage. Skipping school for it when he could get away with it, but he couldn’t for more than the first day. His father gave him one of those _looks_ and his stepmother offered a doctor.

They’d become sneaky. Or mean. Knowing the threat of a doctor would always work now.

That was the fault of his mother’s death, too. And he didn’t really know why because he hadn’t been there, had he? Just had nightmares where his mother was drowning and – sometimes – he was drowning as well. Choking on water and searching for air. Watching his vision grow spotted and his outstretched fingers swell and spasm and try to grasp something out of reach except he couldn’t manage it. And sometimes someone would come to the rescue too, but too late. Waking up choking on air, chest burning, until he was choking on bile instead –

Well, he had to deal with a lot of doctors then, and if not having those sorts of nightmares meant he could stay away from them except for the reviews, then he was more than happy to take them.

Even if he had to suffer through days of school when he could barely pay attention because he was itching to get back to something at home.

                ‘You know,’ Takuya said, one of those days. ‘You didn’t used to get so obsessed with things… except staying away from others.’

Well, he didn’t know why the orb was so important himself but it was and he had to get it out of his head – which meant perfect in reality.


	17. Draconian

The law was cruel, in Kousei’s opinion. But maybe that was its brand of fairness as well. After all, fairness in his eyes meant depriving a mother of both her children for the most part, but at least that would have meant the brothers would have grown up together and it also would have meant Tomoko wouldn’t have had to push herself too hard trying to manage a house for two on her own.

Of course, he could have helped there as well but they’d been too stubborn about each other to consider things properly at the time. They could have endured it. They could have done joint custody or something like that. He could have set her up nearby, or made sure Kouichi had a scholarship or _something_ to ease the burden he knew he’d left them with because the law said one child each and they’d agreed to a complete split based on that –

But really, they’d been fools. Hadn’t either of them considered one of them might die too young? Apparently not.

And neither of them had really considered the twins either. Their own children.

Or maybe it was something inherent to twins and they just didn’t understand it.

Families were linked, but the bond between twins was something else entirely, wasn’t it? He’d seen that, in the first few months following the divorce. How Kouji seemed to adapt some of Kouichi’s mannerisms. How he’d stare distantly like in a trance until he finally forgot, and even then he’d stare into the distance sometimes like he knew there was a part of him missing. And he had no doubt Kouichi was the same. The one he met every now and then was so different to the small child before Tomoko had taken him away…

Sure, he still liked making things and reading and quiet places…

No, that wasn’t true at all. The Kouichi he knew hated quiet places. That was always Kouji’s forte. Quiet, neat places. Kouichi wasn’t exactly messy by nature… But he was creative. He was always doing something or other. Quiet was more than no sound, after all. Kouji was quiet. You couldn’t tell when he was working on something usually.

Except the last few days, when he was working on remaking an orb just like the old one.

He hadn’t seen that quickly enough. Kouji saw it first.

And, of course, it imprinted into Kouji’s mind.

Kousei wondered if he should be scolding Kouichi for that or not. Was that even intentional? Or was that simply proof at how the twins completed each other. He’d seen the original, and then Kouji’s modifications. Kouichi’s orb had been beautiful, but dreary. Like an empty night and wasn’t that strange because Kouichi was the sort of person who was surrounded by something, immersed in something, while Kouji was more than happy to stand out and away. And Kouji was the one who’d added the light, and the shells, and the glitter and added the day to the night.

Well, Kouichi had the orb back now. He could see the changes for himself. And Kouji was working hard to replicate that for himself.

It was almost like they were having the conversation they couldn’t have with each other.


	18. trains

He usually took the train. Which wasn’t unusual in and of itself because he usually took the train everywhere but this train ride tended to be on the long side and it was only because he had a kind boss that he got away with it around twice a week.

Granted, he wound up working through his lunch breaks on other days to make up for it, but it balanced out for the most part. So some of his lunches were long and on the train and probably the least comfortable of all of them because he’d formed the habit of eating at his desk over the years, but the train was a different matter.

And it didn’t help matters that the reason why he was on the train was to stretch himself between two children. Two very different children.

Kouichi was never waiting for him. He never should be, considering they were school days and his late lunch break would mean he’d get there about half an hour after school let out. Which meant Kouichi would usually be at home or at his little spot at the creek or attending to club activities – though Kouichi wasn’t in any clubs, was he?

Kousei made a mental note to ask this time. They did keep on running out of conversation topics so it would be nice to find one that lasted a little bit. And then there was explaining Kouji’s sudden creative spell. And… Well, there were plenty of little things that could nibble up bits of time but what in all of that was actually worthwhile?

Sometimes it felt like the most they got out of it was the conversation…

And maybe he should buy something, this time. Those bento boxes at the station were pretty tasteless and, besides, both of them will have had their lunches. But there was a nice cake place somewhere near the station. Or maybe that was near the station he’d gotten on. Oh well, he could try it out, at least. They could both try it out. Munch on cake and chat like fathers and sons were supposed to chat except he couldn’t seem to get the right stream of conversation with _either_ of his sons.

Somehow, he attracted the attention of the old lady sitting across from him.

If only his children were as easy to talk to as that old lady who managed to make his ears fall off… figuratively speaking. Really. Kouji would have laughed once upon a time on hearing how much his old man had in common with a far older person. Maybe he’d still laugh, if he wasn’t thinking about something else. Chasing shadows, Kouichi called it one time, before they filed that conversation away.

They filed a lot of conversations away that didn’t wind up amounting to anything in the end.

One day soon he’d have to start digging them up again and give them a second go.

Well, maybe the old lady gave him a few extra options for a conversation topic too.

And meant he didn’t finish his lunch, but he polished that off quickly enough on the station benches. And found that cake shop… Which was really more of a donut shop, but oh well. Donuts were sweet and a good treat too.

Now to find Kouichi.


	19. Unarmed

 

Kouichi didn’t answer the door. He also wasn’t by the creek – either one. And so he went all the way up to the school and gave the open gate a considering look.

If only there were students milling around so he could ask… But really, what were the odds the person he caught would even know Kouichi? The school was pretty big. All those classes within a grade level. Those years of middle school. All manners of clubs – sports and cultural – to choose from and who knew if Kouichi was here at all. He might have been at the supermarket, shopping for the week’s groceries.

Really, if they pre-arranged the time, it might work out better. But his own schedule wasn’t so firm. Who knew which clients would take up more time than others. Who knew when something would get scrambled along the way and they’d all scamper about trying to fix it all and eat far too early or far too late. There was no point coming out here if Kouichi was going to be in class the entire time, after all. So he just tried to find the other when times matched up better and he’d been doing a pretty good job of it.

And he’d just been thinking whether Kouichi was in any clubs or not. And he didn’t usually show up on a Friday, did he?

                ‘Hey oji-san. You waiting for someone?’

He blinked at the two boys who’d stopped before him. ‘I am, actually,’ he answered. ‘Kimura Kouichi. Do you know where I could find him?’

They looked at each other, then shrugged. ‘What club?’

                ‘Art?’ he tried, thinking that was safer than admitting he didn’t know. He didn’t need to be mistaken as someone suspicious, after all.

                ‘Art club meets in building C.’ One of the boys pointed out the way. ‘On the second floor, right down the end.’

He thanked them and found the room, and there were students in there… but no Kouichi.

                ‘Can I help you?’ asked the girl who’d opened the door.

                ‘I’m looking for someone,’ Kouichi tried. Second time lucky, maybe? ‘Kimura Kouichi?’

                ‘Oh.’ The girl laughed. Well, hopefully that meant she knew. ‘He’s not in the art club.’

Kousei blinked at that. The art club had been his best bet. Sketching on the creek banks. Making that orb.

                ‘He hangs out in the art room at lunch sometimes,’ the girl continued. ‘But he is in the writing club. They’re in the old library.’

                ‘He’s with the yearbook committee today,’ someone from deeper inside corrected. ‘Though honestly, I’m surprised he agreed to help. He should’ve just punched Takiyama instead. And we all would’ve seen it coming too, after that assembly...’

Kousei filed that snippet of information away, and found himself thinking Kouji would most certainly have punched this Takiyama, even if he didn’t know the tale behind that at all. After all, people didn’t go around saying others deserved to have some sense knocked into them without a good reason.

But what did they mean “after that assembly?”

When he asked, they looked uncomfortable and closed off the topic.


	20. Collect

The writing club met in the old library, which was also in building C. The yearbook committee was supposed to meet in the newspaper room but that was an hour ago so who knew where they were now.

So Kousei waited outside the newspaper room, because at least Kouichi’s bag was there and he’d come back for that eventually.

And then they came. Voices in the hall. ‘Aww, someone’s hanging outside.’

A flash went off.

                ‘Huh? Kimura, why’d you take a photo?’

                ‘Because.’ That one was Kouichi’s voice, though it sounded a little flat.

                ‘Could’ve waited until it was deserted… Or with all of us there.’

That started a cascade and the group, minus Kouichi, bundled themselves into the doorway (and shoved Kousei a little out of the way in the process. ‘Oji-san, take the photo for us?’

Kouichi snapped the photo before Kousei could even offer a hand to his son.

The others pouted at him. ‘Come on, Kimura. Stand in the group photo.’

                ‘Don’t poke,’ someone muttered.

                ‘I’m not an official part of the committee,’ Kouichi interrupted, before they could get carried away. He flicked the photo a few times – and Kousei realised then the camera was one of those old ones, that printed the photo as soon as it was taken. That was a rarity, in the digital age. Even more so if it belonged to the newspaper club, since they’d have to scan them back anyway.

                ‘All you have to do is sign the list, you know.’

Kousei didn’t hear Kouichi’s reply to that. He wasn’t sure Kouichi even did reply to that. Another conversation blossomed in front of him. About him. About the students staring at him. Asking why he was there, then going off on tangents before he could quite get Kouichi’s name out…

                ‘You look a bit like Kimura. Are you related to him?’

                ‘What? Really? I thought he didn’t –‘

                ‘Takiyama!’ That was several voices, and it finally put a name to the elusive Takiyama from before as well. One of the girls sighed. ‘Really. What will it take to teach you some tact?’

They went off on that tangent, and Kouichi quietly asked: ‘Don’t you have meetings on Fridays?’

                ‘Usually,’ Kousei replied, ‘but client cancelled today, so I took my extended lunch break. I hadn’t had a chance earlier this week. And I realised I’d never asked whether you participated in any clubs or not. Tried the art club as a wild guess. Turned out I was wrong.’

                ‘I hate art.’

Kousei blinked. Kouichi’s tone was flat and his expression didn’t change at all, but “hate” wasn’t a word one used lightly. Or _should_ be using lightly, anyway.

And then he blinked again. Because “hate art”… ‘But your drawings. And the orb and whatever else there is.’

                ‘Sure,’ Kouichi said tonelessly, opening a door… And when had they moved away from the newspaper room. The door lead into a staircase. A fire escape, maybe. Dark and cold but Kouichi led the way up the stairs and Kousei followed. ‘But not everything we do in life are things we like.’

Well, what could he say to that? Maybe he didn’t understand how art fit into that, but there were plenty of things that were necessities and nothing more? The list of things they had to drag themselves through just to get to the next could fill a book, or more. And what could he say?

Another conversation topic fizzled out. ‘So… the writing club?’ he tried.

                ‘Fridays till six.’

                ‘And what do you do in them?’

Kouichi opened another door.

                ‘Read each other work. Take turns setting prompts and tasks. Occasionally run competitions. Put together ran anthology.’ He ran through the list: quick and efficient.

                ‘What sort of stories?’

Kouchi was silent for a moment. Kousei took in the scene. They were on the roof. The bars were between them and the high view of the city spread out around them, but the roof itself was almost empty. Just a few folding chairs tied to the rails on one side, and the door, and the fence, and the two of them.

                ‘The impossible kind,’ Kouichi replied finally, and more quietly than anything else he’d said so far, including in the others’ company.


	21. Puffy

Kousei wondered if a lack of social skills was inherited… and if so, it was a pity Tomoko’s genes hadn’t fixed that up in his children. But even if that was true, too much was related to other factors. A broken family. Moving around all the time for Kouji, and barely making meets end for Kouichi. Not to mention how people would have talked…

He wondered why society was kinder on single fathers than single mothers.

He wondered why the law leant towards mothers, and why that didn’t seem to have mattered much in his case.

He wondered why Japan broke old unions with a resounding finality, while some other countries had joint custody and made it work.

He wondered why they’d never tried anyway, because really, the law didn’t stop them from visiting each other, or letting their children visit.

Instead, they’d taken the path that seemed easiest at the time, and now it was so much harder.

He could barely talk to either of his children. From Kouji, he was hiding too much out of necessity now and for his own benefit before, and Kouichi…

Kouichi was too much of a stranger, despite the blood ties. And whose fault was that, really? Certainly not Kouichi’s who hadn’t had any reason to think his father would want to hear from him, who shouldn’t have had the role of seeking out a father who, for all he knew didn’t want him, at all.

And now… Their conversations kept on screeching to a halt far too quick.

The impossible kind of stories, Kouichi said. ‘Fantasy?’ he suggested.

‘Fantasy?’ Kouichi sounded surprised at that, looking over his father before his gaze swept away and through the fence to the city spread below. ‘Maybe fairytales would be a more appropriate word.’

Kousei could hear the sadness in his tone at that: the way his voice softened, and the little sigh at the end of it.

So that was what he meant – and the worst thing was the mess really was too tangled to straighten out. Or maybe that was just his thoughts, him thinking it was too hard and taking the easy way out…

‘Kouichi…’ he said hesitantly. ‘This isn’t fair. I know it isn’t fair, and one day it won’t have to be like –‘

Kouichi twisted around at that, his eyes flashing. And Kousei stopped talking right then and there because, even if it was so different from Kouji, he knew his son was angry.

Kouji’s eyes went sharp and cold, like daggers. Kouichi’s seemed to spark like a lightbulb before going out, and then it was like a wall, or shutters having come down, and Kousei really wished he hadn’t said anything because his voice softening before sounded like they’d gotten somewhere, for once. And now…

‘Don’t offer things you can’t promise.’ And he snapped those words, just like Kouji wound have, even if their eyes didn’t match in that moment at all. And then the fence rattled as he pulled himself up with his aid and he was leaving, the door thudding no louder than when they’d entered behind him.

Kousei rubbed his eyes tiredly – even if he was old and educated enough to know one shouldn’t do so. Still, the scene was blurred, now. Another opportunity lost – or ruined, in this case. What could he do? What could he promise? Was there a solution to this fragile dance, if he looked hard enough? Or had he lost that opportunity too?


	22. panoramic

He couldn’t say he’d expected his father to show up at school.

In fact, that was the one place he’d never expected him.

Even when he was little and dreamed of his father coming back home and them being a big happy family again. Though that wasn’t happening, ever.

_I know it isn’t fair._

Well, that’s not changing anything, is it?

He couldn’t quite remember when it was he’d changed from hoping his father came home to hoping he stayed away, because he’d been away too long to be able to make it up by just waltzing into their lives again…

And now… He was trying to do just that: waltz into his life and Kouichi knew full well he needed him, but he also knew he didn’t have him.

_I know it isn’t fair._

He knew that too, but that didn’t change the fact that things were the way they were. And he knew that. He could sort of deal with that, so long as his father didn’t try to be a father again after so long because that space wasn’t there.

Maybe like the uncle he never saw that was starting to become a little more frequent after ‘kaa-san died. That uncle who didn’t know much about him and he didn’t know much about them and their conversations wound up stilted but they still managed to learn a little bit about each other and realise there was so much basic stuff they still didn’t. But parents should know their children better than that. Children should know their parents better than that.

And uncles shouldn’t be walking into school campuses looking for their nephews. Though maybe an uncle wouldn’t get the club right on the first try. Even if the topic of clubs hadn’t come up before – as far as he recalled. And uncles shouldn’t have had three false attempts until he found him, or look so similar that classmates he barely talked to outside of school-related things could see they looked similar enough to be related.

At least none of them realised he still had the photo.

 _Why_ had he even taken the photo?

His face was cold. His feet were even colder, when he’d stormed off the roof and out of school and straight into the creek. He hadn’t even remembered to take his shoes and socks off until the cold had seeped in a bit, which meant he’d have to walk home with them wet as well and leave them on the mat to dry overnight. Or several days and nights if one wasn’t enough for it.

His head was cool too but that was the whole point.

Because if he had to put up with something, there was no sense braying apologises and promises that couldn’t come true. He was dealing with it – and honestly, his father had the easier role. The less he tried on his end, the easier it was here after this great rift that’s already there and they can’t bridge.

But when he tries to pull it back together and yet they both know the two ends can’t oppose?

…no. He’d rather not have that at all.


	23. motionless

It took Kousei a little too long to react to his son stalking off the roof, and by the time he got down the stairwell, there wasn’t a hint of him anyway. And his bag wasn’t in the newspaper office. And he wasn’t in the library either. Or the creek the neighbour had pointed him to a few weeks ago, or at his apartment. And it wasn’t like Kouichi had a mobile phone to be easily contactable.

Kousei had to admit defeat and head back to work.

And work dragged on. Whenever he was free, he tried the apartment’s landline but no-one picked up. Which could mean nothing, really. Kouichi might not have gone back quite then. Or he might be ignoring the phone. And there were multiple reasons why he mightn’t have come home. He might have had plans after helping out the newspaper club. He might have picked up a part-time job. He might have other places he frequented, places that were more personal and that a neighbour wouldn’t know about. Or maybe he’d gone shopping. Fridays were good days for shopping, right? Or maybe he’d gone to visit his mother’s grave – and it wouldn’t have been right to intrude on that. Especially not with the position he was in.

So he tried calling and continued working and was distracted through all of it. His workmates had to call him

                ‘What’s on your mind?’ Satomi asked, once he got home. He was a little later than usual, too, since he’d taken so long to finish his work for the day.

                ‘I went to visit Kouichi today,’ he explained, after making sure Kouji was well out of earshot. He was actually out, surprisingly. He hadn’t been out on his own violation since… before his mother died. Not that he was the kind who made friends easily anyway. But he was out with what Satomi called a friend. It could just as easily have been an assignment or the likes, but at least he was out. And hopefully doing what teenage boys did on weekends without partaking in too much trouble.

Either way, Kouji wasn’t home and he could talk freely. Or as freely as his own tangled thoughts allowed. ‘He wasn’t where he usually is so I checked the school, in case Fridays were his club days. Turned out they were, but he was helping the newspaper club take photos first.’

                ‘Was he?’ she murmured, returning to her work. She’d been preparing vegetables when he’d come in. ‘I take it he’s not part of that club then? But how nice of him to help out.’

                ‘His classmates seemed surprised he agreed,’ Kousei commented. And he thought he knew why. Indifference could be quite frightening: more frightening than blatant anger. Though those girls had suggested a more volatile expectation. Maybe he didn’t know after all. He couldn’t imagine the Kouichi he knew reacting violently. Even when he’d had the chance, on the roof, all he’d done was stalk off until he melted into the scenery. ‘But I found him outside the club office, and we went up to the roof to chat. Then I put my foot in my mouth.’

                ‘Oh, Kousei.’ She put her knife down. She knew what a sore spot that was for him.

                ‘I am trying,’ he emphasised, ‘but I just can’t seem to say the right things. With Tomoko, or Kouji, or Kouichi…’

                ‘Well, you haven’t caused any catastrophic scenes where I’m involved.’ She smiled tenderly at him. ‘And Kouji and Kouichi are still in reach. You can keep on trying.’

                ‘I have to.’ He plopped down on the chair. ‘I owe it to all of them.’

                ‘No.’ Satomi embraced him quickly. She smelt of spices. ‘You know you’ll all be happiest together, so you’ll ram the wall until it topples over.’


End file.
